Security forces in Qatar detained two Norwegian Broadcasting Corp (NRK) journalists for more than 30 hours and deleted footage they gathered at a migrant labor camp as they tried to report on worker issues ahead of next year’s FIFA World Cup, authorities said on Wednesday.
The Qatari government accused NRK journalists Halvor Ekeland and Lokman Ghorbani of “trespassing on private property and filming without a permit,” as the two returned on Wednesday to Norway following their arrest. The journalists contended they had verbal permission from those they filmed there.
The arrests sparked a diplomatic dispute between Norway and Qatar. Norwegian news agency NTB reported that the Qatari ambassador to the country was summoned to Oslo’s foreign ministry over the matter.
Photo: AFP
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere called the arrests “unacceptable.”
“A free press is crucial in a functioning democracy,” Gahr Stoere wrote on Twitter. “This also shows the importance of this year’s awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize [to journalists]. I am very happy that Halvor Ekeland and Lokman Ghorbani have now been released.”
The arrests show the ongoing sensitivity felt by the autocratic government of Qatar. Other journalists have faced similar problems and detentions while reporting in Qatar as well ahead of the World Cup.
Ekeland, a sports journalist, and Ghorbani, a photographer, had been in Qatar as the country marked one year to go before the World Cup.
“They had gotten all the permissions needed to conduct interviews,” NRK director-general Thor Gjermund Eriksen told a news conference at its headquarters in Oslo.
Ekeland said they “didn’t have a written permission” to film on private property, but those there approved it.
He said security forces in civilian clothes later came to their hotel and asked them to come to a police station.
They “were concerned that we were not allowed to film, but we were invited there by the World Cup organization to film there and there were a bunch of other media organizations there as well,” Ekeland said.
The security forces had a “tone that was quite harsh and they wanted to intimidated us,” but he said “there were never threats or violence.”
“We feel that we were treated well,” Ekeland said.
The journalists told NRK that they were not allowed to leave Qatar with their equipment.
The Norwegian Union of Journalists and the country’s football federation both criticized the journalists’ arrest.
Denmark’s Union of Journalists is urging all Danish journalists not to travel to Qatar to cover the World Cup, saying the country cannot be trusted after the incident.
“I do not trust Qatar,” said Allan Boye Thulstrup, the union’s deputy leader.
“I am afraid that the sources critical of the government risk disappearing or going to prison for a long time, and that they will not be treated nicely in prison,” he added, speaking on Wednesday to industry magazine Journalisten.
“It is of no use that Qatar first promises the press can work unhindered and that they then arrest journalists,” Boye Thulstrup said.
His union has more than 18,000 members.
“Now the authorities in Qatar know what is on the journalists’ equipment,” Boye Thulstrup was quoted as saying. “If [the journalists] have been in contact with sources that are critical to the government ... then it is a process in which Qatar has short-circuited the entire source protection.”
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